JOINT BASE McGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST – New Jersey officials are taking steps to head off the possibility of cuts — or worse, closure — at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, a sprawling military complex that is the second-largest employer in the state.

The state budget signed last week by Gov. Chris Christie set aside $200,000 to help preserve the base. All five military services have missions at the 42,000-acre Joint Base, which spans Burlington and Ocean counties and has been instrumental in supporting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It has a wide range of missions, from Air Force midair refueling to cargo and troop transport, Army training, overseas troop deployment and demobilization, humanitarian airlift missions and major oil spill cleanup response by the Coast Guard.

The base directly employs 44,000 military and federal employees and contractors and generates 65,000 indirect jobs from businesses affiliated with the base, pumping $6.9 billion into the state economy, according federal and state calculations.

State Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said the $200,000 grant to the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs will help persuade the federal government to preserve the base.

“The base is the second-largest employer in the state,” he insisted at a news conference last week outside the Wrightstown base entrance that included fellow legislators and Burlington County freeholders.

“We’re here now because we have to protect these jobs at all costs,” Sweeney said. “We have to fight. We lost Fort Monmouth not long ago, and it had a devastating impact on the economy of the state.”

Because the Defense Department is downsizing, every base is threatened, according to Sweeney.

“This legislation provides resources for the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs to lead that effort and to provide funding to hire consultants so we can make our case to the federal government on the need and purpose of the base here,” he said.

President Barack Obama has called for base closures through the resurrection of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, or BRAC, but Congress has so far refused. The Defense Department may seek another BRAC in 2017.

With ongoing military reductions, the end of the war in Iraq and troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Defense Department seeks budget cuts that include the early retirement of the aging Air Force fleet of 32 KC-10 Extender refueling planes at the Joint Base.

That could occur before the KC-46A Pegasus, a new line of tankers, goes into production, leaving the base without its refueling mission.

An Air Force Reserve combat unit at the Joint Base — the 42nd Combat Communications Squadron — also faces deactivation as part of a national military downsizing if the fiscal 2015 federal budget with less defense funding is adopted.

Sen. Diane Allen, R-Burlington, was the major Senate bill sponsor for the state grant and is a longtime member of the state Council on Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs.

She introduced a resolution last month requesting the appropriation to protect the base. “The Joint Base is critical to communities, families and businesses in the 7th District and surrounding counties in the state,” Allen said in a statement.

Until now, a state task force called the Defense Enhancement Coalition has led the effort to deal with potential closure or major cutbacks with private money.

Among the coalition members are former Republican congressman Jim Saxton and Michael Warner, former commander of Fort Dix.

The Defense Department “does not have to wait for a base closure to change or eliminate missions,” Warner said.

The coalition will work in conjunction with the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and other agencies, he said.

Consultants will help prepare answers to concerns about issues such as airspace congestion in the Northeast. They also will analyze and defend current military missions and offer alternative missions if the Defense Department drops any missions at the base.

Sweeney said it was Saxton who approached him about the need for money to hire consultants and continue studies in relation to the base.

When BRAC chose to eliminate Army basic training at the former Fort Dix several years ago, it was primarily Saxton who convinced the commission that Dix should instead become a training base for the National Guard and reserves.

Wrightstown Mayor Thomas Harper said his small town, with fewer than 1,000 people, depends on the base.

“I’m always worried,” he added. “When Fort Dix had basic training, it was a boom town.”

When the training mission changed in the early 1990s to National Guard and reserves, Wrightstown lost nearly 80 percent of its population and businesses because there were fewer soldiers and base employees.

“Now, it is finally building back up,” Harper said, “and we want to keep it that way.”